As you might have not noticed, each time you change your profile picture (or cover photo) on Facebook, it becomes instantly public. However, there might be some instances that you might not want people to see your profile picture due to privacy reasons. So in this article, we are going to show you how to easily make your profile picture private again.
How to make your Facebook Profile picture private
Privacy is very important, that is why we need to make sure our things do not go into the wrong hands. Here are the steps on how to make your FB profile picture private:
- First, go to your Facebook profile.
- Next, click on your profile picture. If you are looking for an old profile picture, navigate with the arrow keys (left or right), or go directly to Photos > Profile Pictures and click on the profile picture you desire.
- Click on the Edit button on the right side.
- Click on the drop-down button that says “Public” below the date options and choose “Only Me” if you don’t want to show it to anyone, or whichever audience you choose (Friends, Close Friends, your custom groups, etc.).
- Click “Done Editing” once you are done.
With this option, Facebook will not display your profile picture in full to those who cannot access it, but it will still appear as a small image on your profile. This is pretty much just to prevent people for commenting or sharing your profile picture.
Advantage of making your Facebook profile picture private
As we all know, privacy is a very important thing, especially in the era today where every bit of information is already on the Internet and people are subconsciously letting them out, no matter how private they are supposed to be. When you keep your Facebook profile picture private, there is a less chance that you will be harassed. Your picture will also be safe from evildoers who use random pictures of people for dating sites and pornography. Also, if you are a photographer and used one of your shots as a profile picture, keeping it private will lessen the chance of people stealing it as their own.
Conclusion
Hiding your full-size Facebook profile picture from the public is a good thing to keep your privacy up. Share this with your family and friends so that they will know the importance of keeping photos private.
If you are worried about anyone stalking your Facebook account then there is no need to bother as different account settings on Facebook allow you to make Facebook private from Public or friends. This article will solve all your problems on Facebook regarding your privacy and visibility of your content (Photos, Profile Pictures, Posts, Status, Friends) to the public. Here, we will let you know about all the settings you need to configure to make Facebook completely private from the public.
Also Read: How To Change Facebook Name Without Waiting
Contents
- 1 How To Make Everything Private On Facebook Video
- 2 Make Your Facebook Completely Private Step By Step
- 2.1 Initial Settings
- 2.2 Make Your Facebook Profile Private
- 2.3 Hide Your Facebook Account Info
- 3 Conclusion
How To Make Everything Private On Facebook Video
Watch this video to see how to do it:
Make Your Facebook Completely Private Step By Step
Here we will list out all the different settings you need to make to make Facebook completely private to non-friends.
Initial Settings
1. Log in to your Facebook account and click on the drop-down menu icon at the top right and select Settings. Under Settings select Privacy from the left-hand side. Here, you need to change the following settings under Your Activity :
- Change Who can see your future posts to Friends by clicking on Edit and changing to Friends from Public.
- In order to make your old or already shared posts private from Public select Limit Past Posts and click on the Limit Past posts button and Confirm. After confirming click Close and your settings will be saved.
2. Under How People Can Find and Contact You, make the following settings:
- First, change Who can send you friend requests? From Everyone to Friends of friends by the same procedure as above (click on Edit in front of it and change it Friends of friends and Click Close to Save the Settings).
- Now change Who can see your Friends list? to Only me.
- Next, change Who can look you up using the email address you provided? to Friends
- Similarly, change Who can look you up using the Phone number you provided? to Friends.
- Change Do you want other search engines to link to your Timeline? to No. Click on Edit and uncheck the checkbox Let other search engines link to your timeline and click on Turn OFF to Confirm. Click Close to save the settings.
Make Your Facebook Profile Private
3. On completing with Privacy now Select Timeline and Tagging from the left side of the screen. Change the following settings under Timeline and tagging settings.
There are three settings under Timeline and Tagging, Timeline, Tagging, and Review respectively. To change these settings follow the steps shown below:
Under Timeline:
- Change Who can post on your Timeline? to Only Me.
- Next, make sure Who can see what others post on your timeline? is changed to friends.
- Disable the Allow others to share your posts to their stories? option to turn it off.
After this your settings should look like as shown in the screenshot below :
Under Tagging:
- Change the Who can see posts you’re tagged in on your timeline? to Only Me from Friends.
- In the next option, When you’re tagged in a post, who do you want to add to the audience of the post if they can’t already see it? Select Friends.
- At last, change Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded? to No one.
Under Review:
- Enable Review posts you’re tagged in before the post appears on your timeline? by clicking on Edit and changing it to Enabled from Disabled.
- Similarly, enable the Review tags people add to your posts before the tags appear on Facebook?
With this, you can stop someone from tagging you on Facebook.
4. Now from the left side of the screen select Stories and make sure both the options under it are changed to Don’t Allow as shown in the screenshot below.
5. After that select Public Posts on the left side and change Who Can Follow Me from Public to Friends.
6. Other than that you can also disable the face recognition feature on Facebook to enhance your privacy. This will ensure that Facebook doesn’t automatically suggest you as a tag in a photo in which you are present.
Hide Your Facebook Account Info
7. Now let’s hide your personal information.
- Visit your Profile Page on Facebook and select About.
- Under the About section select Contact and Basic Info. Hover your cursor on Birth Date. Click on Globe Icon (which symbolizes your information is visible to Public) or People icon (which symbolizes your information is visible to your friends) and change it to Only Me. Then click on Save Changes.
Similarly, you can change other settings like Contact Information and others and make them private and not visible to the public or non-friends.
8. In order to make your Facebook profile picture private from the public go to your Profile Page and click on your profile picture. On the right-hand side of the screen under your Name click on the globe icon or people icon and change it to Only me to make your profile picture completely private even private for the people who are friends with you.
Choose Friends if you want to make it visible to your friends.
9. For more privacy on Facebook, remove the location information from your posts. This way no one will get to know about your location when you upload a new post on Facebook next time.
So these were the settings you need to make in order to make your Facebook account private from the public.
Also Read: Most Interesting Facebook Facts
Conclusion
Following these tips, you can now easily reveal less information about yourself on Facebook to the public. Also, note that Facebook keeps on changing its UI, so these settings might change a bit while you are reading this article, however, the steps remain the same for all the settings.
Do let us know if this tutorial helped you to make your Facebook account completely private except for friends. Also, share any other settings which we might have missed.